After a Week of Curtailing Joint Operations, Has Anything Changed?

Last week the US made a major deal of “scaling back” its joint operations inside Afghanistan after the surge of green-on-blue attacks by Afghan troops against NATO occupation forces. There was talk of re-screening the entirety of Afghanistan’s recruits, a process that would take months.

Today, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says that the scaling back is over, and joint operations are “back to normal.” He claimed that there had been some “temporary adjustments” made.

Back to normal is a relative term, of course, as even if the operations returned to where they were two weeks ago, the troops are even more distrustful of their Afghan allies than they were before, and Afghan forces don’t seem very happy with US advisers either.

Concerns that the indefinite delays in training could mean major changes to the war’s timetable seem to be behind the backtracking, but with no apparent changes made, can more insider attacks be far behind?